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Friday, October 17, 2014

Yoga for Football Players?

Yoga is no longer just for women and health enthusiasts. Football
and basketball teams all over are incorporating yoga moves into their training
regimes. Here are a few ways that yoga
can help advance your fitness journey:

IMPROVE FLEXIBILITY

The stretching in yoga is beneficial to increasing the range
of motion in your joints. This allows athletes to put more explosiveness in
their movements to jump higher, throw further, and step wider. Athletes that
train often tend to build up high levels of lactic acid, therefore getting a thorough
stretch is the best way of reducing these aches and pains.

STRENGTHEN MUSCLES

Yoga is a more balanced way of doing strength training. It permits
the body, in a low impact way, to gain strength without the stress of weight training.
Instead of focusing on one muscle at a time, yoga also trains your entire body,
giving you a connected feeling.

PREVENT INJURIES/QUICKEN RECOVERY

The fact that yoga lengthens and relaxes muscles, more blood
is able to flow throughout the body. By allowing more oxygen to travel through
your body, the muscles are more easily helped in the healing and growing
process.

RELAX YOUR MIND

The mental benefits from yoga are limitless. Regularly practicing
yoga allows you to take an hour to focus on yourself and block any chaos from your day. Because most styles of yoga involve meditation techniques,
this is a great way to keep you composed and centered. With deep breathing and
inward thinking, yoga can bring calmness and reduce stress.

Every year, yoga is becoming a bigger trend as more professional
athletes are finding ways to implement it into their regimes. LeBron James is
an example of such athletes finding the benefits from doing yoga, as he states "Yoga
isn't just about the body, it's also about the mind and it's a technique that
has really helped me."